With popularity of various electronic devices, a user may own more and more electronic devices. For example, the user may own electronic devices such as a mobile phone, a desktop computer, a PAD, a notebook computer and the like, but these electronic devices may have different application situations respectively. For example, the mobile phone, the PAD or the like may often be used in a moving situation (e.g. on a bus), while the desktop computer may mostly be used in a fixed situation such as home or an office. Also, the various devices may have different usage comfortableness. For example, with the desktop computer, the user is able to watch a film and read a novel more comfortably.
Due to different characteristics of the above various electronic devices and the user's mobility, synchronization among the electronic devices is desirable for the user. For example, contents newly downloaded to the desktop computer may be synchronized to the mobile electronic device. Or, because the desktop computer or the notebook computer may have a separate and relatively large keyboard, the user may need to synchronize an address book from the mobile phone to the notebook computer for storage or modification.
The inventors have found that there are at least following disadvantages in the related art.
According to existing methods for synchronization, generally all synchronization files are copied completely and then saved locally. Such synchronization methods are difficult to manage and also ineffective. For example, when there are a great deal of synchronization files, it takes much time for transmission, but actually the user may need only some of these files. In such a situation, the synchronization efficiency is very low, and it takes much time to obtain few files that are actually wanted.
Further, according to the existing synchronization methods, one electronic device can synchronize with only one further device. Files in the one electronic device cannot keep synchronization with those in a plurality of other electronic devices. This will be described in detail by an example as follows.
Assume that a device A has a music synchronization file folder, in which ten songs previously synchronized from a device B to the device A are stored. At this time, if the device A is further synchronized with another device C to obtain other songs in the device C, the ten songs in the device A will be deleted, and finally there are only songs synchronized from the device C to the device A.